Blessed by the Potato

Here’s a neat idea from London Hydro and the London Public Library: you can borrow a Kill-a-Watt energy meter from the library using your library card, and find out how much energy things around your house use (with the idea being that it would help you find ways to conserve). I think it’s a pretty neat idea to share equipment like that through the library.

Well, the weather’s been quite blustery here today, and that lead to a rough night of sleep for me. Every time I woke up with a jolt to something banging outside I’d panic and think someone was breaking into the house. Finally at 5 am I just got up and started my day. It’s kind of sad how getting broken into can make one paranoid. Oddly enough, it wasn’t our gate banging and thumping out there (it usually is, it’s quite noisy if it gets unlatched), so I don’t know what was so loud. I haven’t slept well in over a week now :(

Over the holidays, the check engine light on my car came on. I remember getting all freaked out and pulling over the first time that lit up on me, but a few years ago it started going off every few months due to a sticky solenoid valve of some sort, so I’ve become a little more liassez-faire about it. When I’m in London, I usually take the car in to Westgate Honda for service: they’ve been a pretty stand-up dealership for me, with repair rates that are fairly competitive with independent shops (they charge more for labour, but some services are flat fee, and they’re very good about explaining things to me and giving me written quotes for big things). If I had something else that needed to be done, such as an oil change, then they’d pull the code off the OBDII for the engine light for me for free. Not this time — they dinged me for $90 just to read the code. Ouch.

While in the past that light has meant something happened in the car but its not really a repair issue (a cylinder pinging, or a valve getting temporarily stuck), this time it indicated that the oxygen sensor in my exhaust system has failed, which is over $300 to repair. D’oh. They also pointed out that my radiator is in rough shape. I knew that already, it’s leaking about 1 L of coolant per year. That’s such a slow drip out of the system that I’m not really worried about it, and it still keeps the engine cool, but it must be getting bad if they noticed that on a quick visual inspection. Another $375 repair. While I don’t like driving around without the oxygen sensor working properly, I think I’m going to defer both repairs until the spring (and probably defer the radiator until it becomes a bigger problem), just to see what the rest of the winter brings. I don’t like having my car in anything less than perfect mechanical condition, but it’s just been such a money pit this last year or so…

Oh, I think I found the source of the noise that woke me up:

I swear I’ve ranted about the mad proliferation of power adaptors, power bricks, AC-DC transformers or whatever you want to call them before, but I can’t find it in my archives. My search function is not quite as helpful as I would have hoped.

Anyhow, this was a pretty good Potatomas for me, with lots of toys to haul in: a Nintendo DS, some Wii games, and a new camera to replace the one that was stolen. The camera looks pretty keen: a Canon SD850 8-megapixel unit that’s quite small and sleek. So far I only have two complaints about it. The first is that the flash is way too bright, and that it could really use a half-flash setting, or even a low, med, high flash like my old, old 3-MP camera had. The second is that it doesn’t take AA batteries, so I have to remember to charge it when going places, and also to take the proprietary charger. Likewise, the DS has its own charging dongle. My old Sony camera also had its charger, but it used rechargeable AA-batteries, so when I inevitably ran out of juice in the middle of a trip or a party, I could just run into a convenience store or bum some batteries from somewhere else and I was good to go.

My cell phone (motorola Razr V3c) has a mini-USB slot to charge, which I find quite handy. I don’t need to pack a charger, just my laptop. Of course, that stupid thing needs a specific driver for my laptop in order for it to charge properly, so it was of no help when my phone died over at a friend’s place last night, and I had no way of charging it.

Another device I have is useless for the moment as I’ve lost its charging brick, and am trying to figure out how to get another. At Wayfare’s house, her mom has a bag of power bricks and no one knows what they’re for, so they’re afraid to throw them out just yet (in a sign of inspired organisation, they’re labelled with the date they were found so that they can eventually be declared orphan bricks and thrown out/recycled).

I think about now I would kill for someone (ISO? ANSI? IEEE? The government?) to come out with a couple (even a couple dozen) standardized power brick/battery charger configurations. A few DC voltages, a few different max current/wattage ratings, a few different plug geometries, and we’d be off to the races. Sure, we might have a whole alphabet of charger types A through Z, but even narrowing it down just that much would help if it ever becomes necessary to replace one. At work we have “universal” power adapters that are giant and have selectors for 3, 6, 9, 12, or 15 V and 4 or 5 different plugs, and while we use those for a number of different pieces of lab equipment/prototypes, I don’t think there’s a single laptop that they could run. The desktop replacement ones need too much power, and the smaller Dells have a weird square 3-pronged plug.

Plus, my understanding is that there is a certain amount of inefficiency inherent to these transformer power bricks. People simply aren’t going to pay the price for a more efficient version for every device they have; in some cases, the power bricks might end up costing more than what they power! However, if there were only so many power brick types needed in a home, then a person could spring for a more efficient one, and then use it to power a couple of different devices…

For some portable devices, like my camera and DS, it does make sense that the AC-DC converter is in a separate power brick, even if the non-standard adapters drive me crazy. Other devices, such as my PS2 and computer have the power supply internal, and then have a fairly standard plug on the back. I don’t know why that’s not the case for the Wii and the TV — it’s not like they’re portable, and they don’t have batteries so they can’t be used separately from the power supply. While it would be more weight to put on my lap, I would even prefer to have the power brick internal on my laptop, since I can never travel far without it anyway (note that I don’t think this should be true of most laptops: mine is already heavy and hot enough that it’s never on my lap anyway, and the battery life is so short that I never carry it anywhere without the power brick).

I did not set out to set out to scam Air Miles, let me tell you that up front, though that is essentially what ended up happening.

What happened was that I was looking to buy xmas presents, and not having much luck in the stores, so I turned online. I was worried that, being 11 days before the big day at the time, there wouldn’t be enough time for my items to ship. Not to fear, many sites had big banners on their front pages, “order now for shipping in time for xmas!” On Dell’s site they had a Nintendo DS game my sister wanted and I couldn’t find in stores. It was listed as “in stock” and “ships 5-7 days”. Great, I thought, even if it’s a bit longer than they estimate, it’ll still be there on time.

I went in via Airmilesshops.ca’s portal, which lets me get a whole 1 Air Mile from the purchase. I placed the order and got the confirmation email: estimated ship date: December 26th. D’oh! Well, I thought to myself, at least that’ll be close enough that I’ll still be at my parents’ house to give it to her, and I can just put a card under the tree or something. The next day another email came in: the item was out of stock and the estimated ship date was now mid-January. At that point, xmas was saved by Wayfare, who found the last copy in a Future Shop for me. I cancelled the order and slept soundly, having finished my shopping early for one of the first years ever.

I just got the email from Air Miles that my account has been credited the 1 Air Mile from that cancelled order. I successfully scammed 1 Air Mile. Of course, I didn’t set out to do that, and part of my conscience wants me to call them up and give it back. Of course, the rest of me thinks that the Air Mile, with an approximate value of 14 cents, is not worth the hassle and would end up costing them more to take back… and that I deserve it after they lied about the game’s shipping time and in-stock status.

With their high interest rates, credit cards can become a maw of doom for people with credit issues. For everyone else though, they can be a great way to defer your payments by a week or two and earn rewards at the same time. I’ve been looking into my credit cards and figured that it’s time to upgrade my Mastercard. A few years ago I got my BMO no-fee Mozaik card, which gives me 1 air mile for every $40 I spend (an approximate return of about 0.35%), which was a pretty good offer at the time. Now, however, that rate of return is a little lacklustre. Part of the problem is that Air Miles have been devalued in the last year or two (they used to be worth about 16 cents each, and now are just above 14 cents each — based on the number of Air Miles required to get a gift certificate), and part is that other no-fee rewards cards have come out and become competitive. Right now I’m trying to decide between the PC Financial Mastercard, which essentially returns 1% good for groceries at any Loblaws/Supercenter/Valu-Mart/No Frills, and a Canadian Tire Mastercard, which won’t tell me its rate of return but which I believe is also 1%, good for stuff at Canadian Tire. I’m leaning towards the PC card for a number of reasons, mostly because I also have my chequing account there so things will just be easier.

While I’m not looking for a Visa card, TD has a cash back Visa that can return up to 1%. My RBC Gold Visa also gives a return of about 1% (though it is a fee-based card; of course, I have that card for other perks like free insurance on certain purchases).

So 1% looks to be the rewards level to shoot for these days. Does anyone know of any cards with even higher rewards? I’d really prefer a no-fee card, but might run the numbers for a card with an annual fee and higher rewards to see if it makes sense. Does anyone have any other recommendations? (I’m not really interested in getting an AmEx card — I haven’t found a single place that would take AmEx but not Visa/MC, and I’m not interested in a card from MBNA since their telemarketers drove me crazy).